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…slang…the home-made language of the ruled, not the rulers, the acted upon, the used, the used up. It is demotic poetry emerging in flashes of ironic insight.

— Anthony Burgess A Mouthful of Air: Language and Languages, Especially English (1992)

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Poetry

More quotes by Anthony Burgess

If Shakespeare required a word and had not met it in civilised discourse, he unhesitatingly made it up.

A Mouthful of Air: Language and Languages, Especially English (1992)

Few men can do more than touch the fringes of a woman's satisfaction.

The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985)

She sat shortly after, rosy-footed, in a pair of my black Charvet pajamas, sipping warm milk.

Earthly Powers (1980)

Celibacy is not merely unknown to Islam, it is unintelligible.

The Enemy in the Blanket (1958)

To impose good , whether through force or through some technique like aversion therapy, is evil. To act evilly is better than to have good imposed.

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There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature (1836)

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.

T. S. Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)

Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity...but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'.

George Chapman Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

Michael Faraday

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Anthony Burgess (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.